


Your Vulcan Friend

by cipherfresh



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Daily Life on the Starship Enterprise (Star Trek), Gen, Lwaxana Troi (mentioned) - Freeform, POV Second Person, Vulcan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24763678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cipherfresh/pseuds/cipherfresh
Summary: You're an Ensign in Security, and your best friend and roommate is a Vulcan.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 31





	1. One Of These Days, You're Going To Hug Me Back

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written an AO3 story by myself, really, and I don't experiment with second person too much other than in short-story ways like this (like in Federation Gothica), but I can see the appeal.

Your best friend is a Vulcan. You’re always giving them hugs, which they begrudgingly accept. They always give you sound, logical advice, and you entertain them with your illogical idiosyncrasies. You’re also quite the duo in Security. “One of these days,” you tell them, “you’re going to hug me back.”  
“That would be illogical.” they say. They almost look like they’re smiling. “I might as well say I could get you to conform to Vulcan logic. They will be equally futile.” You smile back. You’re best friends for a reason.

Your Vulcan friend is an encyclopedia of information. They’ve helped you win an argument once or twice with their incredible memory “The Andorian army on Psh’Tallk lost every battle until they were rescued by the Enterprise NX-01, so it is unlikely an Andorian ship of that era could deafeat an army of such magnitude...”. You were both Ensigns at that point, and you’ll never forget the look on that Lieutenant’s face when you friend recited the trivia and tipped the argument in your favor. 

You’re an excitable person with a 100mph train of thought. More than once, you’ve gone for a high-five with your Vulcan friend, and they were (logically and calmly) mortified at first, but remembered it was common among humans. You’ve really tried to stop, though. Your Vulcan friend will easily listen to you ramble on for hours after lights-out in your shared quarters, about how you’d be a geologist on Trenzalore, what an incredible planet with fossil history.

Your Vulcan friend (quite logically) takes meditation very seriously. You join them once a week for meditation. They use candles you picked out as having liked the smell of that time on Bajor. You haven’t said anything. If you did, they’d probably ask if you were accusing them of having illogical and emotional preferences. Nevertheless, when you download new books on PADDs, you find your friend reading them, too. You’re working up the confidence to invite them to a holo-novel where the two of you would be the two main characters.  
As much as insufferable Vulcan logic can be exhausting, your Vulcan friend has been- well, an amazing friend, a voice of reason, and someone to confide in. You’re not sure if they feel the same way about you (certainly not a voice of reason), but you’re quite happy to have an emotional attachment to them.

Since you’re both in Security, you’re sometimes sent down on away missions. Some of them haven’t been pretty, and you’ve seen people die that you’ve talked to and gotten to know. On your first mission together on a starship as lowly Ensigns, you saw some good people die on the surface. When you beamed back up, your Vulcan friend told you about the Vulcan god of death, Shariel. You’d wandered around the halls of the ship, and your conversation had wandered to some other topic. You weren’t even on the same deck you started on. You were just happy to have a friend who * understood * you- all your pointless ramblings understood by Vulcan patience. You appreciate that. And you’ve mentioned it to them. They said having patience was logical. You made a toast to lost friends, and logical decisions that first night.

You’ve learned about Vulcan arts and culture, you’ve made an effort to learn about Vulcan culture, since you very often just word-vomit Human culture on your friend. You respect their dedication to logic, and give them the benefit of the doubt when you disagree about things. They’ve been right about more things than you’d care to admit. They have, in return, also trusted you to make illogical decisions that wind up being beneficial- you’ve taught them a lot about risk and taking chances. You’ve played Kal-toh together, and you usually lose, but you’re happy to have played. You’re a night owl, they’re an early bird, but you’ve realized over time that you try to wake up earlier, and they go to bed later, so you can talk about your day and what you do when you’re not both doing Security duties.

And, as much as you joke about how nice it would be if they could just be emotional- you have seen them emotional, and it’s scary. Your friend was once possessed by a parasitic alien that controlled their actions, and was stealing the nutrients from their body. They’d turned deathly pale, and you could almost smell their body rotting alive. Your friend, possessed, had said some of the meanest things ever directed to you, because the alien had your friend’s memories and knew what to say to get you to leave them alone. You’d been upset, and wondered about why they’d suddenly hate you. Their cold fury had been terrifying. You found out about the alien parasite attacking them, and eventually gotten their body to Sick Bay, where they were quickly helped and the alien parasite removed. You’d started crying when they sat up calmly and monotonely apologized how they may have hurt you when they were possessed. They accepted your hug, and let you cry on their shoulder.

On an away mission gone awry, 20 security officers had been sent down, and were now frantically beaming back up to avoid the rain of bombs in a war zone. You see your Vulcan friend with their broken combadge across a clearing. You could give the transporter Chief the word right now and be beamed up by yourself, but they’d find it difficult to find your Vulcan friend on the map. Making an illogical decision, you barrel down the clearing as explosions go off, and dust powders the air, and sprint for what you would want to say was a quarter kilometer- (your Vulcan friend will claim it’s more of an eighth) to your Vulcan friend, and give the transporter Chief the “two to beam up, energize!”. There’s no need to ask why you did it. They know why you did it. You value their companionship. And humans are sentimental morons. Your Vulcan friend tells you off that it was an illogical decision. It’s their way of saying thanks. You can tell they’re grateful. You ask if they want to play Kal-toh together tonight. They say yes. By some miracle that night, you win by a landslide. You know why. You don’t say anything. You’re just happy they’re still here.

During seasonal crew reports, there’s rumor of a promotion for Ensigns in Security. You get back to your quarters one day, and your Vulcan friend makes a comment about how they expected you to be up and arms about the promotion, or be sucking up to the Commanders to heighten your chance of getting a promotion. You tell them you figure that they’ve been rubbing off on you. You’ve been making-gasp-logical decisions. You think about them a lot, and you try to be a person they’d be proud of when they’re not there.

Your Vulcan friend's logic gets on your nerves sometimes. They complain about the logic in keeping messy quarters. Shouldn't they realize constantly complaining about something and expecting different results each time is illogical? Somebody famous said something like that. Whatever. You sulk for a day, whatever, you were on duty for most of it, and you realize it's dumb. Cleaning your quarters can seem a challenge at times. Well, that's why you have a roommate, don't you? You head back to your quarters that night, and apologize. They logically accept your apology. At the end of the day, you can expect your Vulcan friend to make a logical decision and accept your apology. The planets still spin, the sun still rises, things break in Engineering and Vulcans make logical decisions. All is right with the world.


	2. Day Job

You and your Vulcan friend go on shore leave together. This planet accepts Federation credits, of which you not your friend have ever used. You pool your credits to buy (buy- what an archaic term) some incredible plants for your shared quarters. You also both quite like candles, so you get some candles with unique smells. Your Vulcan friend remarks that once smells like the atmosphere on Vulcan. You wonder if they’re homesick. You get the candle.   
This has been quite the planet for shore leave, you’ve gone riding on the planet’s equivalent of a horse, and you Vulcan friend said they didn’t want to, so you ride the oil fields on horseback. When you meet back up to be beamed to the ship, they tell you they went and meditated intensely with other people who liked intense meditation. You’ve never been able to sit long enough to do the intense meditation Vulcans do, but they seem to have had a good time. You don’t share every interest in common with your Vulcan friend, but both of you have had a good day. You both collapse into your beds and fall asleep as soon as you get to your quarters together.

When you're not on away missions, you spend a decent amount of time doing buddy-system guarding for ambassadors and sometimes criminals. You'd have thought Security was a more interesting job. It is fun on away missions (missions where nobody gets killed, that is), but away missions usually aren't longer than a few hours, and it's not like you go on away missions every day. 

There's no rules against talking while posted on Security duty, so that's basically what you do every day with your Vulcan friend. You've recounted every anecdote, joke, funny moment and every piece of trivia or scrap of knowledge from the Academy. Your Vulcan friend listens to you contemplatively, taking in every word and they seem like they remember all of it. They've brought up stuff you've forgotten you told them about. They've told you some of their stories as well, and they've been interesting. 

You know Vulcans often have preferences for small things- if they're choosing clothes, some will have preferences for different shades and colors and such. They've told you stories of people they've met at the academy, the illogical humanoids who they still remember. You ask them about probabilities- standing at doors for hours until Alpha shift ends gets boring quick, so by the time you run out of anecdotes, you ask for the probability that you'd both get promoted tomorrow. "Out of the blue?" they ask. They seem to have a liking for human phrases. "Low." 

"What's Vulcan like?" you ask one day, when you're guarding Lwaxana Troi. They take a moment to speak, then they tell you about the colors and memories, the buildings and people and rituals of their home planet. You can almost feel their homesickness, too.

Your Vulcan friend has a few artifacts from home- mostly stuff for meditation, and you've tried to spruce up your quarters with their stuff and your stuff. Your quarters have been decorated throughout the months with things you've picked up on other planets. You've tried to pick up cool-looking rocks you see on planets you've visited, but the Transporter Chief yells at you. Something about how they mess with the transporter lock. 

Your other friends have said they can cause you to get spliced when you materialize, but that's probably just superstition. An illogical fantasy, your Vulcan friend would say. Since they've complained, you really do try to keep clean quarters- you clean before meditating with them once a week, then you go and indulge in some of your hobbies afterwards. It's a nice routine. 

Try as you might, you've never been the most focused person, your mind wanders, and you can ramble from topic to topic for hours. It's how you stay sane during long, boring hours on Security postings with your friend. You hum every tune, song and jingle you hear. One morning when you're trying to meditate together (and you really want to scratch your arm, but you resisted the urge), you hear your friend humming something they've clearly picked up from you. You start humming it with them. It was a song that must've been a lullaby from when you were younger, or maybe you heard once in a dream...

You both fall asleep, sitting on the floor. Your Vulcan friend snores when they nap, by the way. 

While on an away mission to do some usual terrain samples of an uninhabited planet, the ship sent an audio transmission to the away crew. They were being attacked by some other ship, and they'd throw the ship off their tail and be back for them. You could hear a chorus of 'Acknowledged' ring across the area. The planet's 30 hour day was coming to a close as you saw the ship go to warp from the atmosphere. Ships aren't supposed to go into warp in solar systems, so the danger must have been immediate. 40 of you on an away mission, many with geological samples, dirt samples, water samples, most beamed up to the ship already.

You wonder how long it will take for the ship to shake off the enemy, and come back to pick you up. You want to ask the Commander still down there with you, but you want to see if your Vulcan friend's predictions are similar to the commander's. Also, your Commander sort of intimidates you. It doesn't take long for your Vulcan friend to take the words right out of your head, and encourage the two of you to head up and ask your Commander what the update is on the situation. They estimate the ship will be back by mid-day tomorrow, so the away team has to wait from tonight till mid-day tomorrow, roughly 20 hours. 

The planet isn't much like Earth or Vulcan. A silverish-gold sky, and the light for 15-hours of daylight illuminated the planet oddly, a darker sky for half the time and millions of visible stars, and during the day, slightly lighter skies and less visible stars, but no singular star like the sun to illuminate the planet. 

Your commander starts handing out sleeping bags and federation ration packs. They say there's no reason to worry, the ship will be back in less than a day, it's just we don't know if the food here on this planet is poisonous or not. That's unnerving to you. Your Vulcan friend tells you worrying is illogical. You tell them they're right, and get into your sleeping bags. The stars are like nothing you've ever seen before. 

"Do you mark constellations on Vulcan?" you ask. "'Cause we have a lot on Earth. Helping travellers find their way before compasses and maps..." you trail off.   
"Early Vulcans did that too." your Vulcan friend says, almost wistfully. "The stars guided their way back to their towns."  
"That they did." is the only thing you can say. 

You're silent for a while. You think about the times you've been on Earth, and stared at the shapes of clouds, or looked at constellation maps. Your Vulcan friend is staring silently into the sky, waiting to become tired. You point to the sky. "Those stars over there kind of look like a combadge." you say.   
"I suppose they do." says your Vulcan friend. They take a breath. "And...that cluster of stars over there...looks like that flower you gave me on Stardate 45637."  
"Yeah." You say, too tired to say anything else.


	3. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and so finishes my first individual AO3 story. Enjoy!

You've tried a few new things to pass the time during the five-year mission. You've entered a region of space 10 light years across with almost no planets, but lots of nebulas. Maybe you should have switched to geologist, you'd at least get to keep the cool rocks you'd find on Trenzalore. You've experimented with painting, sewing, meditation, taking volunteer shifts in Engineering and other divisions that values every hand in their cards. You've helped fix broken pipes with the nanobot controller, take shuttle shifts with sensor beacons to help the ship get * that * much more data about the surrounding area, and you're still a bit bored. There's nobody to guard, unless somebody happens to snap and murder some crewmen, but everyone seems to still have their arms and legs attached. What to do? You settle on cooking for your new experiment to pass the time. You settle on two meals, at first- a Vulcan one, and a Human one, from your family's culture. You replicate the food and the bowls and supplies that people in 2063 had. Your Vulcan friend gets back to your quarters when you're trying to cook, and they're taken aback by the smells from your shared kitchen. You're excited to show them what you've whipped up. You go all out- setting the table with mats like the one your parents had at home, cute little cups and utensils. You have dinner together, and you may or may not have gossiped about that Lieutenant in Engineering and Commander who are really, really bad at hiding the fact they're dating. Your Vulcan friend steals a few things off your plate with their fork, and you decide to do the same and eat some of their food. You ask them if they want you to make more Vulcan food. They say no, they quite like the way you make human food. Could they have more?

Life on a starship is full of twists and turns no logical man could have predicted. Sometimes the two of you, a logical Vulcan and an illogical human make a great pair. Your Vulcan friend helps de-escalate situations where you’ve maybe gotten a little angry or upset, and they remind you- “brush your teeth”, or “put that in a place you’ll remember it”, or “be safe.” You’re there to be someone just crazy and irrational enough to take a leap of faith for illogical decisions which wind up benefiting yourself and others. “You’ll have fun, join me!” “I’ve got a joke, but you have to say ‘Who’s there’, and...” “I’m going back for them! I know they’re only one person, but i’m going back for them!” Another way to pass the time on a Starship, are going through the Federation’s history and cultural files. You’re reading Vulcan literature, and your Vulcan friend reads human literature, too. Your Vulcan friend has shown up to more crew-bonding activities (gatherings in the holodeck, movie night ((to study earth culture, they say)) eating in the mess hall) but more often than not, when they’re bonding with the crew members, telling the others about things that pique their interest, -they’re with you. Always with you. Your Vulcan friend accompanies you more and more to small things, like dropping stuff off in Stellar Cartography and PADD maintenance shifts you sign up for. They sign up for them, too.

When you met on the first day on the ship, you’d been put together because your names came next to each other alphabetically. You happened to both be in security, so you’re very often being grouped together, whether for ship-wide gatherings or two-person Security detail. You’d asked for a particular bunk when you both went to your quarters for the first time. Your friend- just a crewmate at that point- was perplexed. They accepted the other bunk as their own, and you kept them up all night with questions about their Academy experience, their life on Vulcan, logic, meditation, is it true Vulcans can’t lie? They answered every question calmly and carefully, and they didn’t belittle you for your curiosity. 

Vulcans are cold. Very often they’re called that, personality wise, cold blooded, coldly logical, but they are indeed, physically cold blooded. Their blood is green ice water with cell organisms that like to call themselves mitochondria and lysosomes. Yes, you know about Vulcan biology from Academy required medical classes, but you forgot how physically cold they were, until you met your Vulcan friend. From hugs, to elbowing them for their attention, to “there’s something in your hair, let me get it”, to grabbing them grabbing your wrist before you do something reckless, or them deciding to brush your hair, because it’s a mess. Pats on the back, and that one time you had to help them wash off Raudalian fire sand. A sonic shower didn’t work, so you had to use old-fashioned soap and water. 

You’ve mentioned how their skin is cold. “It’s a matter of perspective.” your Vulcan friend said. “To me, your skin is almost burning hot. It makes it quite jarring experience when you touch me.” You don’t have anything witty to say in return, so you just say “That it does.” You’ve picked up their short, formal statements like that into your vocabulary, some. In return, they’ve picked up some of your vocabulary. Law of equivalent exchange, or something. Over time...their ice-cold skin becomes less jarring to touch. You do it so often. You’re always getting their attention by a tap on the arm, or grabbing them by the wrist and taking off running to Surak-knows-where. 

Your Vulcan friend has no trouble hearing your voice in their head, or hearing your laughter. You occupy their thoughts. They occupy yours. 

In a quiet night in your quarters, you’re reading news about new technologies on Earth on a PADD. Your Vulcan friend is reading a book. You’re sitting next to each other, quiet, content to read. You both put your free hand, not holding something to read near each other on the armrests. Your fingers touch. You put down your PADD, and they put down their book. They’re blushing. They’re smiling. So are you.


End file.
